Former Beatles buddy brings Bible to Lodi

Ken Mansfield had spent enough time around performers to realize he didn't want to be one.

Brian McCoy

Ken Mansfield had spent enough time around performers to realize he didn't want to be one.

"It's really not what I intended," Mansfield said. "I like being one guy back."

So what compels the 70-year-old to leave his Arnold home a couple of times a month for the far corners of the country, where he regularly appears before hundreds, sometimes thousands?

God and the men James Taylor dubbed a "holy host of others," the Beatles.

The latter connection came first. In January 1965, Mansfield was named West Coast head of promotion and artist relations for Capitol Records. The position brought him into the Beatles' orbit, and they later tapped him to run the American arm of their own Apple Records. Those high times, however, were followed by some drug-fueled hard ones that persisted until Mansfield accepted Jesus as his personal savior.

These days, Mansfield gives his testimony in churches across the country, using our never-diminishing interest in John, Paul, George and Ringo to reach both believers and the Beatle curious. Featuring an exclusive 20-minute film and a question-and-answer session, Mansfield will present "The Beatles, the Bible and Beyond" Sunday at Lodi's Bear Creek Community Church.

Over the course of a lunchtime interview this week in Murphys, it became clear that there's more to Mansfield than just his Beatles connection. Earnest and friendly, he speaks with the clarity of someone who has seen it all and come to realize what's truly important in life.

His ties to the music industry certainly reach beyond the Beatles. Mansfield played in a folk band as a San Diego college student, and his Capitol years brought him in close contact with the likes of the Beach Boys and Glen Campbell. In Nashville, Tenn., in the 1970s, he worked with Waylon Jennings, thus helping foster country's outlaw movement.

But the Beatles remain his signal professional connection - Mansfield has written two books on the subject - and the calling card for his evangelism. Initially, their relationship was professional and, more to the point, generational. Unlike the other "suits" the Beatles encountered at Capitol and its British parent, EMI, Mansfield was a peer.

"They were working with a young guy," Mansfield said. "They were just as fascinated with me as I was with them."

Suffice it to say Mansfield's position at Capitol didn't require any heavy lifting.

"My job was to entertain, to hang out, ... to take people to lunch," he said. "It was a life of the Brown Derby."

Mansfield was barely six months on the job when the Beatles came to town in August 1965 for a return engagement at the Hollywood Bowl. The band had a day off, so Mansfield hung out with them at a rented Benedict Canyon house. The Byrds dropped by with Peter Fonda, who - remarking on a gunshot wound he had suffered as a child - kept telling John Lennon, "I know what it's like to be dead."

The Mansfield-Beatles relationship thrived when the band returned to Southern California the next year. It took on a new dimension when the Beatles formed Apple in 1968 and asked Mansfield to run the American branch.

Apple's tale of financial woe is an oft-told story; "well-intended, very rare, doomed from the start" is Mansfield's characterization. As the Beatles disintegrated, and money and management tangles ensued, Mansfield departed. He became vice president of MGM Records and then president of a CBS-affiliated label run by Andy Williams. In the '70s, he created his own company, Hometown Productions, and produced such artists as the Flying Burrito Bros. and David Cassidy.

With great success, however, came equal excess.

"We had the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll thing in our era," Mansfield said. "We were told that marijuana wasn't bad for you and that cocaine wasn't addictive.

"You kind of get off center with all of that. ... It has its own momentum downward. I had the servants and the estate in the Hollywood Hills. I lost everything."

It all went, including a trove of Beatles memorabilia. Once out, Mansfield found he couldn't get back in the record business.

"The doors were just shut on me," he said.

It was his future wife, Connie, who brought Mansfield to Jesus in the mid-'80s. From there, his life began to change for the better. He got back in the music business and went on to earn Grammy and Dove awards for the Gaither Vocal Band's "Homecoming" album.

By the late 1990s, Mansfield was receiving calls from pastors wanting him to come to their churches and give his testimony. He resisted, just as he had always resisted writing a book about the Beatles.

"There were a few of us who felt that way," Mansfield said, noting that, among others, long-time Apple head Neil Aspinall has never written a memoir. "It was (about) the privilege of being there."

Mansfield eventually relented and went on to create "The Beatles, the Bible and Beyond" and to write "The Beatles, the Bible and Bodega Bay" and "The White Book." This fall will see the release of a new memoir, "Between Wyomings."

To some '60s veterans, the idea of the mingling the Beatles and evangelism might seem strange. After all, the Beatles were prime movers in a decidedly secular counterculture. Mansfield sees no conflict.

"They were into that, but they left it all behind," Mansfield said. "They led very exemplary lives with their causes.

"And there is something in those songs," he added, citing the lyrics of "Help!" and "The Long and Winding Road," that's "an inch away from being Christian songs. I feel the whole reason I was with the Beatles is what I'm doing right now."